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this year, including 169,000 from Time Warner Cable alone. It might look like a product of the recession, but this could be the beginning of the end for the traditional cable model.

The Reuters article points to financial factors, like a weak housing market and soaring unemployment, for the decline. But that’s not the biggest problem cable companies are facing. Even if Americans cut cable out of the family budget due to financial hardship, the wealth of other entertainment options out will slow their return. Cord cutting continues to become a more attractive option.

Among the informal data set of “myself and people I know,” virtually none pay for cable. And we watch a ton of TV. We use a combination of Netflix, Hulu, and other services to fulfill our viewing needs. If there’s a show I really want to watch that I can’t get otherwise – i.e. “Breaking Bad” or “Mad Men” – I buy it on Zune, through my Xbox.

If someone like me — a person who by any measure watches a very large amount of TV – can manage to get by without paying for cable, it’s bad news for the people who make money off of the traditional model.

Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Glenn Britt was skeptical, telling Reuters that the numbers for this phenomenon “are still quite small.”

He may be right, but I can’t imagine how that number is going to do anything but grow. The alternatives are too attractive, and they’re only getting better. A few years ago, the idea of watching Netflix on your computer seemed like a poor substitute for an actual television, but now any number of devices will put the service on your TV or Tablet. Apple is making deals with Amazon and Hulu, and it won’t be long before the powerhouse tech company makes its presence felt on the television screen.

Eventually, cable companies will have to approach a-la-carte cable by offering smaller packages, specifically tailored to a viewer’s needs. People who just want to watch The Saints don’t need HGTV, and vice versa. That sort of unbundling will take a while, due to a Byzantine system of contracts, so in the meantime, cable companies can embrace alternative methods of distribution by pushing high-speed internet access, as the Time Warner president said in the article.

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